Seasonal migrant workers employed under a British government scheme to minimise labour shortages after Brexit must be protected from debt bondage and slavery, campaigners and lawmakers said on Wednesday.

Critics say the pilot scheme to allow 2,500 migrants from non-European Union nations to work on farms for up to six months is “fundamentally flawed” because the upfront visa and travel costs could leave workers vulnerable to debt bondage.

Tying workers to employers in the agricultural sector may also encourage exploitation as they may be reluctant to report abuse fearing deportation...

Challenged on the issue in parliament... Britain’s interior minister Sajid Javid pledged to keep it in mind.

... the government is scrambling to ensure firms have enough workers to fill the gap once Britain leaves the EU in March and free movement ends...

Agriculture is high-risk as it relies on low-skilled seasonal workers who sometimes face exploitative wages, unsanitary working and living conditions and even physical attacks from supervisors...

"Workers pay the price as big British companies squeeze their suppliers", 18 August 2018

A fifth of British companies have found they use suppliers who are either paying their staff late or at illegally low rates, a survey has found, raising further concerns about the treatment of vulnerable workers...

Industry figures said they expected such abuses to get worse as a result of Britain leaving the European Union when companies are likely to squeeze their suppliers even more to cope with rising costs. Further rises in the minimum wage could also encourage bosses to break the law.

There are already concerns about insecure employment practices, with more work contracted out to workers who are not officially recognised as employees...

[The] group director at the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply, said: “The vast majority of British businesses would agree that short-changing their employees is inexcusable, but when it comes to the workers further down their supply chain they don’t have the same level of concern.

“Too often it is the people at the bottom of the supply chain who feel the pinch...”

"UK to keep EU rules on workers’ rights and the environment after Brexit", 12 July 2018

Theresa May has accepted EU demands for a clause in the Brexit deal that will prevent them lowering employment or environmental standards. The White Paper published by the government today includes the ‘non-regression clause’ that Yahoo revealed in March the EU was seeking to insert into the deal... It means ministers would not be able to axe EU legislation like the Working Time Directive... Despite the concession, trade unions and environmental campaigners are still concerned about the prospect of the UK being left behind in terms of rights and standards. Although the clause means no existing legislation can be axed in the UK, it does not mean the government will have to implement EU legislation introduced after Brexit. TUC general secretary [...] said: “Today’s offer on workers’ rights isn’t good enough. It provides no absolute guarantee for existing rights... “[T]his proposal would allow the rights of hardworking Brits to fall behind those of workers in other European countries. What we need is a common rule book on workers’ rights, now and into the future.”

[M]any of Romania’s roughly 4,500 textile factories – employing more than 200,000 people in one of the EU’s poorest countries – [...] relied heavily on British clients who paid in pounds...

Since Brexit, British brands have resisted passing the cost of the pound’s fall in value onto shoppers; in an industry where margins are tight and every penny counts, that has left some Romanian factories scrambling to increase production to cover lost earnings and searching for clients elsewhere in Europe, according to interviews with more than a dozen factory owners and industry leaders...

BIRN contacted a number of British fashion brands known to have contracts with Romanian factories to ask about pricing policy post-Brexit...

Of those that replied, Topshop said it was unable to provide any information while Debenhams said it only sourced 3 percent of its products from Romania and anyway could not comment on commercial agreements. Burberry, Arcadia Group and French Connection did not reply. [also refers to IKEA]

Ministers including Boris Johnson and Michael Gove are plotting to scrap the working time directive, according to numerous media reports. This is a crucial piece of EU law that protects working people – and which working people were promised would still apply after Brexit.

If Johnson and Gove succeed, 7 million workers could lose their guaranteed legal right to paid holidays. That includes nearly 5 million women and many workers on part-time and zero-hours contracts.

Stripped of the laws that restrain them, bad bosses could force their staff to work excessive hours, far above the current limit of 48 hours a week. Lunch and rest breaks would be under threat too, as would health and safety protections for night workers...

[T]he Ceta deal between the EU and Canada [...] has [been] called... “the perfect starting point” for trade talks. But Ceta puts the rights of corporations and foreign investors ahead of those of working people...

Britain’s workers need a deal that not only safeguards the rights we already enjoy, but also in the long run, keeps UK workers’ rights apace with their equivalent in Europe...

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Britain’s…referendum over its EU membership has turned into a battle of the myth-busters…[T]he EU is not responsible for as many employment rights as you might think. The UK implemented the Equal Pay Act in 1970, before it even joined the EU. It already had sex and race discrimination laws too…It is true that the EU has strengthened, expanded and updated these rights over the decades…Yet…the biggest EU directives…contained big loopholes…for UK employers. Indeed, Britain’s labour market is the least regulated in the EU…That begs the question of which labour market regulations the government would do away with, should the UK leave the EU…The truth is that most employers are not angling for these EU-related rights to be repealed…A vote for Brexit…would have important implications for the labour market but that is because it would shake up immigration and trade. The impact on employment rights is a sideshow…

…[T]he Human Rights Act stitched the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into British law…The removal of the Human Rights Act, whilst likely to come in tandem with Brexit, is neither dependent on Brexit nor Brexit upon it. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is…an EU body…so Brexit would entail Britain formally cutting the link between the ECJ and the UK…The European Union’s treaty…Articles 45-48 recognise the rights of workers…and their rights to work freely across the EU without discrimination based on nationality…There is also important case law establishing workers’ rights that has emerged from the EU system, including the ECJ…The…argument…by some pro-EU liberals that the EU ‘stands for human rights’…is unconvincing…[T]he EU occupies a double role…of both reinforcing the norms of human rights…and simultaneously participating in human rights violations…Brexit…will damage human rights provisions…But staying in the EU now also can’t be a vote for the status quo – it should become a moment to combat the structural violence perpetuated by the EU itself…

The…UK referendum debate look set to be dominated by social policy, centred on the question of migration…The overriding issue is now economic insecurity and the dangerous political dynamic it has created…[D]eindustrialisation is largely something which the UK has brought upon itself, but which EU rules have done nothing to prevent, and have probably…exacerbated…[T]he perception that EU rules on free movement of labour are driving casualisation of work and wages in the UK labour market is partially correct, but a much bigger causal factor is UK domestic social policy, together with the EU’s rules on freedom for enterprises to move across borders in search of low-cost regulatory regimes. Is there a way out of this bind for progressive politics? Brexit would not help, since [there is]…no guarantee of a switch of direction in social policy…It is the rules governing free movement for capital, not just labour, which must be reconsidered...Reversing this trend will be critical…for the very future of the EU…[Also refers to Amazon, Sports Direct, and Tata Steel.]

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